Service Pack 2: It's Out There

Service Pack 2: It's Out There

Service Pack 2 for XP was released to the public
last week and many of you installed it - and wrote to us about your
experiences. Lots of you had no problems at all, but others weren't so
lucky. Following are some of the most common complaints and kudos we're
hearing.

Several readers have mentioned problems with DOS-based games and online games. Others are having problems with peer-to-peer software. The latter is based on the fact that SP2 limits connections per port to 10 (this is to help slow the spread of viruses and
worms such as Sasser), so programs such as eMule, that open connections to a
lot of different destinations, are slowed down, too.

A few users are reporting general slowdowns, although many others say they haven't noticed any change in performance. A few others say XP is faster after the installation. Many say the bootup
process takes slightly longer. Lots of people have complained about the time required to install SP2, typically from half an hour to an hour, depending on your machine.

We've heard that SP2 can slow down your FireWire (IEEE 1394) 800 devices, but that this can be fixed by reinstalling the SP2 FireWire drivers after you install SP2.

We've also heard about conflicts with ZoneAlarm. This is probably because SP2 turns on the Windows Firewall by default. If you use a third party firewall product, you need to turn off the Windows Firewall.

SP2 may affect users of Outlook Web Access (OWA).
If you get your company email from an Exchange server using the OWA Web interface, check out this KB article:

http://www.winxpnews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=040817ED-KB_883575

Some large companies, including IBM, are telling
their employees not to download and install SP2 until they've had more time
to test it.

On the other hand, the pop-up blocker that SP2 adds to Internet Explorer is getting a big thumbs up. Another new feature that users like is the Add-ons manager. This option is added to the Tools menu and it shows you what has been added to IE and lets you disable them. This is great for turning off those spyware toolbars that get installed
"accidentally."